The jury of the Baltic Focus competition composed of Ināra Kolmane, Filipp Kruusvall and Arūnas Matelis decided to award the Main Prize to our lecturer and director Maciej J. Drygas.

His film TRAINS has already won the Grand Prix at the IDFA Festival in Amsterdam, as we wrote in our news: filmschool.lodz.pl/news

Congratulations on the award and great work!

TRAINS
screenplay and direction: Maciej Drygas (directing lecturer)
editing: Rafał Listopad (editing lecturer)
music: Paweł Szymański
producer: Vita Żelakeviciute
production: Drygas Film Production
co-production: Polish Television, Era Film

A train compartment is a place where a person is temporarily torn out of the context of everyday existence. For a few hours or a few days, they are in a new society, and their life goes on according to the time marked by the timetable. There is something beautiful, and magical about a train journey, but often also very painful. Sometimes the journey is accompanied by hope, or - there is no hope at all. The joy of travel becomes a curse, and tears of joy mix with the pain of despair. Trains is an original, reflective journey through the 20th century composed exclusively of archive materials. A beautiful and bitter image without words, accompanied by a sophisticated sound design with music by Paweł Szymański.

Trailer: vimeo.com

Trailer Complete list of Artdocfest / Riga winners: artdocfest.com/en/news/winners-2025